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Anecdotally among my peers, we make more money than our parents, yet mostly need two incomes instead of one to have kids and not all of us can buy a house. I'm 40 and can't buy my house but my parents could just get a mortgage in their 20s. I doubt they even considered renting, it was just normal to buy a house if you had a job. The number of big vacations is similar to our parents (about once in five years). We probably eat in/order from restaurants more than our parents but the high cost of groceries and fact that both parents work means it's not as simple as claiming we are simply not being frugal. We have Netflix and smartphones but these are hardly the reason we can't afford houses. In terms of adventures, many of my friends' parents had a cabin and boat, and as kids most of our families went on weekend trips skiing, to a lake beach/cabin, camping etc multiple times per year. As middle aged adults now, none of us have cabins and weekend trips might be done 1-2 times per year instead of 5-6 times per year because it's so expensive. Anyway, it's easy to check inflation and cost of housing vs salaries to verify that the problem is cost of living and wages, not excessive vacationing and avocado eating. Also note that this website is heavily skewed towards American software developers, so things are generally worse than indicated by the comments here. Even the discussion about remote work is a fairly privileged one, as most workers need to do work at a workplace (factory, warehouse, retail, service, etc). |